INCOVER is holding its very 1st Stakeholder Dialogue Workshop on the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research‘s (UFZ) Case Study “Turning Wastewater into the added-value Products Citric Acid and Carbon Black, and into Energy” in Leipzig on 29th June 2017. The workshop will take place from 9:00-14:00 at the UFZ premises.

The INCOVER project is coordinated by AIMEN  and has been approved for part-funding by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program. The aim of the project is “to develop innovative and sustainable added-value technologies for a resource recovery-based treatment of wastewater, using smart operation monitoring and control methodologies.” Practical demonstration will be carried out by the Project at three added-value wastewater treatment plants to recover energy and added-value products. A more precise description of the project can be found in the attached project leaflet or on the website: http://incover-project.eu/about.

One of these three demonstration sites is this Case Study, implemented by the UFZ, in which biomass waste is treated in a three-step process:

  1. A mixture of C-rich industrial wastes and grey wastewater will be used to produce organic acid, ex., citric acid and itaconic acid, via a yeast-based biotechnological process.
  2. After extracting the citric acid from the mixture, residues will be used for biogas production via co-digestion with industrial C-rich substrates. An output of this process, will be biogas produced for use in power generation or heating.
  3. The anaerobic sludge will be treated in a hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process transforming waste biomass to valuable ready-to-use soil fertilizers.

The combination of these process will enable a material and energetic recyclization of wastes, thereby contributing to closing life cycles in the bio-economy. Preliminary results are very promising and indicate that the INCOVER yeast-based process is a very suitable option for organic acid and biogas production.

Anyone interested can sign up and attend the Workshop be sending an Email to: water@iclei.org.